Movie Review: Snowpiercer

I didn’t know much about Snowpiercer, other than it gave Chris Evans something to do while waiting for the next Avengers sequel to come along and it was about some train.

I did love the backstory, global warming is a thing, and the people of the smart governments decide they can affect climate change with some special chemical CW-7. Unfortunately, it works too well and freezes the planet. Oops.

Since this is dystopian, all the common people are in the back of the train, and the rich people are in the front of the train. . . for 17 years.

That’s it. This supertrain races around the entire world, taking an entire year to go around the entire world and touches all the major points of the world, funded by this super rich guy who built this train to keep humanity alive.

People in the back of the train are basically cattle, being told to sit down when called upon, and if you have any talents being pulled to go to the front of the train, but things boil over when children are being pulled out of line, and measured before being taken away. The guards are brutal and don’t think twice before just cracking someone with the butt of a rifle.

So Chris Evans and his group, including John Hurt, are a bit tired of being stuck in the back of the train, and Chris Evans wants to take the engine. So they bind together, and begin their assault, having to fight thier way forward, and we get clues as far as whats going on here.

So how is Snowpiercer?

I’m going to come back to a lot of it, but for the vast majority of the film, I’m really enjoying it. Much like an actual train, Snowpiercer takes some time to get going, but once it does, It’s a great ride, right up until the end. I hate the ending, I really do. To enjoy Snowpiercer, you have to accept the premise that in a frozen world, the train is a perpetual engine, they have to race around the world using the front of the train to melt the Ice to make fresh water, and you can feed a couple thousand people for 17 years with provisions and proper management, on a half-mile train. Plus no bridges ever break. Other than that, all good.

I do wish they would have done more with John Hurt, he’s 17 kinds of awesome and then just does nothing.

Snowpiercer is damned hard to grade, it has some solid rewatchability, it’s well acted- even though I kept thinking that one dude was from Oldboy, but that might just be racist, but the Ending just kills me, and it really hurts all the aspects of it. I’ll go 7 here, but a better ending might actually push it to a 9. I’ll come back to that in the spoilers. The acting is stunning, by the way. Well worth the watch, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the ending.